Pimp ‘N ‘Ho theme parties are lies about prostitution.
Prostitution is not entertainment. Prostitution is not a job.
95% of 100 women prostituting in Vancouver said they wanted to get out of prostitution. (Farley & Lynne, 2001). 86% of these women were currently or previously homeless. Prostitution is sexual harassment, rape, battering, verbal abuse, and domestic violence. It is a racist practice, and a violation of human rights, and it’s also childhood sexual abuse. Prostitution is a result of male domination of women and a means of maintaining male domination of women.
Pimp ‘n ‘ho parties set up a model for how men can hurt women, and make a joke of it.
Pimp ‘n ‘ho parties teach men that pimping women is fun rather than what it really is - coercion, verbal abuse, battering, and sexual assault. Most women in prostitution have pimps, who are sometimes called boyfriends or managers. Pimps target girls or women who seem naive, lonely, homeless, and rebellious. At first, the attention and feigned affection from the pimp convinces her to "be his woman." Pimps keep prostituted women in virtual captivity by verbal abuse - making a woman feel that she is utterly worthless: a toilet, a piece of trash; and by physical coercion - beatings and the threat of torture. (Barry, 1995). 85% of prostitutes are raped by pimps. (Council on Prostitution Alternatives, 1994)The answer to the question "why do prostitutes stay with their pimps?" is the same as the answer to the question "why do battered women stay with their batterers?" Humans bond emotionally to their abusers as a psychological strategy to survive under conditions of captivity.
Prostitution in Vancouver is the legacy of colonialism and gender inequality.
Prostitution is racist. Women are purchased for their appearance based on race and ethnic stereotyping. The 1996 Census lists 1.7% of Vancouver’s population as First Nations. The 1998/1999 Capture/Recapture data cites 7% of Vancouver/Richmond’s people as First Nations (Healing Ways Aboriginal Health & Service Review 1999). Either statistic suggests that First Nations women are grossly overrepresented in prostitution.52% of women in one study (Farley & Lynne, 2001) were First Nations, and in a second study of prostitution, 31% of the women were First Nations (Cunningham and Christensen, 2001).
Prostitution in Vancouver (and everywhere) is extremely violent. Prostitutes are the most raped group of women on the planet.
90% of 100 women in Vancouver interviewed by Farley & Lynne in 2001 had been physically assaulted. 78% had been raped during prostitution.
Cunningham & Christenson (PACE) interviewed 183 Vancouver women, and found that 68% had been physically assaulted in the previous 6 months, 68% were raped in the previous 6 months, 72% were kidnapped or confined in the previous 6 months, and 60% were victims of attempted murder in the previous 6 months
Women enter prostitution as young teenagers, not as worldly women who are playing ‘ho to have a good time.
The average age of entry into prostitution is getting younger, with the average age of entry now about 13-14 years. 52% of women in prostitution in Vancouver entered prostitution at the age of 16 or younger (Cunningham & Christensen, 2001) In prostitution, demand creates supply. Because men want to buy sex, masturbating into another human being is considered 'normal sex.’ Here are quotes from three different johns:
Whether it is being sold to a brothel, or whether it is being sexually abused in your family, running away from home, and then being pimped by one’s boyfriend, or whether you work at a lapdancing club — all these forms of prostitution hurt the women in it.
75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide (Hunter, 1993)
Like combat veterans, women in prostitution suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychological reaction to extreme physical and emotional trauma. Symptoms are acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, emotional numbing, and being in a state of emotional and physical hyperalertness. 67% of those in prostitution from five countries had PTSD — a rate similar to that of battered women, rape victims, and state-sponsored torture survivors. (Farley, Baral, Kiremire, Sezgin, 1998)
"For a great part of 1992 I lived in a beautiful apartment. I drove my expensive car. I bought lovely clothes and traveled out of the country. For the first time in my 20 years as an adult woman, I paid my own way. There was no need to worry about my rent, my phone bill, all my debts. I felt invincible. And I was miserable to the core. I hated myself because I hated my life. All the things I came to possess meant nothing. I could not face myself in the mirror. Working in prostitution lost my soul." (Survivor interviewed by Boyer, Chapman & Marshall 1993)
What should we do about prostitution?
When we understand that prostitution is violence against women, it makes no sense to legalize or decriminalize prostitution. The violence in prostitution is not a result of "social stigma" as some maintain. Decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution would normalize and regulate practices which are human rights violations, and which in any other context would be illegal: sexual harassment, physical assault, rape, captivity, economic coercion, or emotionally damaging (verbal abuse).
In 1999, the Swedish Parliament passed a law that criminalizes the buying of sexual services but not the selling of sexual services. This is a compassionate, social interventionist legal response to the cruelty of prostitution, which gets at the root of the problem: the demand side - pimps and johns. The Swedish law does not criminalize women in prostitution, instead, offering them needed social services such as housing, drug & alcohol treatment, healthcare, and job training.
The law seems to be working. For more information about prostitution, see http://www.prostitutionresearch.com